Cuttone and Co. Inc.

During the climactic scene in the movie "Ghostbusters", Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis' characters (Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman and Dr. Egon Spengler) confront Gozer, the evil god of destruction, atop an upper west side apartment building. Through Ray’s innocent thoughts, Gozer summons up a gigantic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man to destroy them (think “economic crisis”. I’ll leave the Gozer reference for you to work out on your own). After setting the sailor-capped white giant ablaze, they realize that they must destroy Gozer’s portal. As they aim their proton packs at the evil god,

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A cold wind is blowing across the northeast this morning, bringing snow, sleet and freezing rain to beleaguered commuters, yet hope has begun to kindle in the hearts of investors as the market has quietly pulled back from the brink. Expectations have been knocked so low that modestly successful earnings reports seem like winners  and news that isn’t terrible is treated almost as a positive.
 
With rumors concerning the creation of an aggregator or “bad” bank swirling like snow across the frozen streets, bank stocks staged a nice rally yesterday, lighting a modest fire beneath the broader

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Like Titanic survivors huddled in a lifeboat adrift in the night, investors have been scanning the horizon, hoping to spy a glint of light that could herald the arrival of rescue. Yesterday's surprising increase in home sales and rise in leading indicators may mark the beginnings of a recovery, but until outlines of an economic Carpathia fully emerge from the gloom, traders will remain huddled down in the boat and avoid any unnecessary rocking motions.
 
The release of today’s Case-Shiller home price index may offer hope, but suspicions are that we may still be seeing merely the tip of the

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It's hard to believe that there are still pirates among us, but following the recent disclosure of the massive Ponzi scheme that Bernard Madoff is alleged to have perpetrated, it’s hard to deny that they are real and that not all of them are operating from havens on the coast of Somalia. The real question is: Will they face justice for their crimes?

For most people, pirates have been near-mythic figures who faded into history and today exist largely in the imagination of Hollywood filmmakers. Old-school cinematic pirates used to brashly swing aboard victim's vessels with a knife clenched

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As Gilda Radner’s elderly, slightly deaf SNL character Emily Litella used to say sweetly while peering over her reading glasses:
 
“Never Mind”
 
After a Tuesday session which saw another terrifying plunge in bank stocks, the market, particularly those very same bank stocks, roared back yesterday and posted a stunning gain that surprised many veteran traders (myself included). Spurred on by comments made during Timothy Geithner’s confirmation hearing, investors concluded that the nomination would succeed and they decided that the banks weren’t going to be nationalized after all. Those feelings

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Charles Dickens opened “A Tale of Two Cities”, his novel set in London and Paris during the days of the French revolution, with these lines.
 
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way--in short, the period was so far like the

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Happy New Year.

I don't care what the calendar says, last Friday was a semi-holiday with most big players sidelined, and despite rising prices, that session can't be relied on to give any indication of where the market is headed in the upcoming year. Trading for 2009 begins for real today.

Investors traditionally look to the first few trading sessions to set a tone for the upcoming year, and the month of January, as a whole tends to be a strong bellwether for the subsequent 11 months of trading. There is growing optimism this year that markets may rally as a new administration takes office and

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